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After finally getting caught up on our inbox and backlog of to-dos, Goldman Prize staff took some time to reflect on our week in Rio. And while we share the many frustrations at the vacuum of government leadership, it’s become clear that what went down at Rio Centro did little to undermine the tremendous participation from the grassroots level.

Amid continuing criticism against the outline agreement that came out of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development last week in Rio de Janeiro, a group of civil society leaders have signed on to a statement titled “The Rio+20 We Don’t Want” addressed to the UN and the government delegates at Rio+20.

Recipients of the Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s largest award for grassroots environmental activists, are calling on world leaders to attend the upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro and make real commitments to protect the environment.

Brazilian President DilmaRousseff may have narrowly avoided a showdown on the national Forest Code reform debate late last week, but remaining provisions in the bill still pose a significant threat to the tropical forests in the Amazon.

During a meeting with the 2012 Goldman Prize winners in DC last month, White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley stressed the importance of individual countries making their own commitments on curbing emissions and fighting climate change.

While they were in Washington DC last month, the 2012 Goldman Environmental Prize winners met with Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. This is the third time Ms. Sutley has met with Goldman Prize recipients; this time they met in the Roosevelt Room, which features portraits of Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt.

In the weeks leading up to the Rio+20 Earth Summit, we’ll be posting blog entries that celebrate environmental achievements accomplished at the grassroots level over the past two decades while urging government leaders to step up to the challenge of sustainable development.

As the first part of a this new blog series, we’re pleased to highlight excerpts from Douglas Goldman, the Goldman Environmental Foundation board president’s speech at the 2012 Prize ceremony in Washington DC, where he praised grassroots activists for their environmental accomplishments and called out the vacuum of leadership from government leaders around the world: